Back to Work - Day One

Up bright and early this morning, did loads of housework and was busy washing the floor in the living room when it dawned on me that Maggie had made no effort to say hello, not unusual for her to stay asleep, even when I'm hoovering but she was unusually still. Imagine my shock when I realised she'd gone and I'd been in that room cleaning for at least an hour and hadn't noticed. I felt so terrible, but she was definitely dead and had been for many hours as she was rigid, but fast a sleep and so very peaceful. She will take the last available space in the graveyard and already I need another paw print adding to the tattoo. We were called out on a rescue call yesterday afternoon, but she seemed her normal self and Peter and Beverly said there was nothing unusual about her when they left here early evening. She ate fine and Hilda had been cuddled up to her on the sofa as usual this morning so there was no real need to suspect anything untoward but I can't tell you the guilt I'm feeling right now.

Maggie had appeared on TV a couple of time, once on the Channel Five news and she appeared on the One Show next to Adam Sandler, but what kicked it all off was her appearance on the Paul O'grady show. She'd arrived in rescue several months earlier having been bought out of a violent household but a policeman. He had tried to keep her but she was terribly incontinent, very frightened and incredibly over bred so he gave her up to us. She was rehomed twice, but sadly returned twice due to her lack of house training so when we were asked to take a dog on the Homeless Dog's section, she seemed the perfect choice. A home was actually found from that TV appearance, but the new owners vet insisted she had cancer and should be put to sleep, thankfully I arrived at the vets before they had chance to go through with it and snatched her back deciding that enough was enough and that we'd keep her here. That was over 3 years ago, we had her boobs removed to stop her tripping over them any more and she had a complete hysterectomy which dealt with her internal infections from being so over bred and subsequently cured her incontinence. The operation lasted over 6 hours and it was touch and go if she'd survive, but she did and despite the scar that ran the full length of her underside, she recovered perfectly. She hated walking and would pretend to limp if you tried to get her to go for a walk, but had her own spot on the end of the sofa where she refused to budge - even when the floor was layed in the living room she stayed on the sofa as the workmen carried it from one side of the room to the other as they layed the floor around her.

So back to work this morning with lots of orders to wade through, so please bear with us, thankfully the phone is being unusually kind to me, even for the first day back when I expected it to not stop ringing so thank you everyone for giving me some space to get my head round this mornings events.